Leaderboard

Total of 30 panels (6kW) tracking the sun and heating the covered pool in front of it.

We are levelling our back garden ready for turfing and are using earth from a pile stored in the garden. Originally the pile was around 12m long, 4m wide and 2m high. We used half of it to landscape the front garden a few years ago and the remainder has sat there being colonised by miner bees. Over the last two or three years we have had more and more Ivy Miner Bees nesting and this year we have thousands of them. Unfortunately their site is slowly being decimated by us and we uncover nests with females waiting to hatch out. They are amazingly robust but as soon as they fly off they are grabbed by the males that are waiting to mate with them. It's very interesting watching them but it does slow up the work being done. The area I videoed is about a foot square. https://www.bumblebeeconservation.org/ivyminingbee/ Ivy Miner Bees.mp4

I do not think we have a thread about how to display house numbers and names. This is an idea from a blog called The House that Black Built. It could also be done outside the gate in the paving. I like that as our numbers here are very confused. Ferdinand

Just come across this video with some nice demonstrations of the effect of shading parts of a panel when there are two connected in series or parallel. If shading is likely to be a problem (as in @ProDave's case it definitely is) then this confirms that parallel is the right answer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qD3mN8VotQ Their results are very much in line with what I'd expect.

Being a self employed tradesman so visiting lots of peoples houses daily, it staggers me how many have poor or no house numbering. Very often if looking e.g for number 34, I eventually find No 40 has a number displayed, and I then have to count back along the row to find 34. I liked the Australian rural house numbering. My BIL lives at 999 Emery's Bridge Road. That means his house is 9.99 Km from the start of the road.

You must be really commited to your beard.

No, the unvented tank. With a vented system it's not the tank location that matters but the header tank. You could improve it a bit by putting the header tank higher in the loft. But if fitting a new unvented tank and it won't fit the airing cupboard, put it in the loft.

I made up a laminated oak board from leftovers from the skirting, drew up a design and had a chap CNC machine it on both sides:

Its like the one my boy made for his A Level project! ? Second pic roughly assembled pre gluing. Got a pic somewhere with the ldrs and solar panel on... 

Thanks @joth. Sorry I didn't get back to you in that thread. It seems that it just measure net usage as far as I can see.

I wouldn't say large, it's only a few square metres. We have had most success with leaf cutter bees when the box has been at head height and facing anywhere from south to west. At the moment it's in a temporary position facing north and there haven't been any takers. I didn't know before but on Gardeners World, this week, they said the canes should be replaced every year.

If it is yellow, let it mellow.

And another:

Here's a rubbish picture of the novy in situ with the extractor on the lowest height position. Each hotspot is in front of the slider control, i.e. parallel with the line of the extractor. I have found it to be very effective; my MVHR extracts for this room are also located about 1.5 metres back from the hob so rising steam isn't a problem. I'm very pleased with it.

Wait until you get to work closely with the upper echelons of the building world, as in the news making ones. Watch the cheapest contractor, with no track record get the job based on price. Sit in awe and watch as specialist consultants are brought in to advise you how to do a job you've done for 35 years. Watch said consultants pander like a puppy to every little architectural design quirk requested and the pair of them have a love in. Further despair as the consultant bends the rules on or even openly flouts respected codes of practice as "they're not law" and end up with said code of practice being dumbed down at its next edition. See these projects years down the line and quietly chuckle thinking "I knew that would never work/not get used/actually be a hinderance to the end user". And the best bit is there's never any come back on the people responsible for writing the spec or their stupid, enforced, unworkable ideas and omissions. Oh, and watch it happen on the next project. And finally wish you'd been born 10 years earlier so as to be close to retirement and that final release.

Saturdays weather here